Centre Pompidou-Metz

Tania Mouraud

04 Mar - 05 Oct 2015

Tania Mouraud in 1968, posing in front of Infini au carré © Droits réservés
TANIA MOURAUD
A retrospective
4 March - 5 October 2015

Kicking off on 4 March 2015 at Centre Pompidou-Metz, this show will encompass the city of Metz and its surroundings.It will be presented in its full scope and unprecedented form as of 27 June 2015.

Tania Mouraud is a unique artist in a class of her own. Her work has continued to evolve since she started creating in the 1960s, alternatively exploring multiple media including painting, installation, photography, performance, video and sound. One thing has remained constant, her works have always explored the relationship between art and social connections. With this in mind, she suggested integrating meditation rooms in standard homes (1968). She plastered her discontentment with society, with materialism taking precedent over man, on 4 x 3 meter billboards (1977). She has also reflected upon the aesthetic relationship between art and war, and through the act of writing, has examined the limits of perception by creating “words of form”* (1989). Since 1998, she has intertwined photography, video and sound with painting to examine the different aspects of history and the living.

* Elisabeth Lebovici, « Tania Mouraud, mots de formes », Libération, 19 November 1992

THE RETROSPECTIVE AT CENTRE POMPIDOU-METZ

Covering 1100 sq. m. in Galerie 2 at Centre Pompidou-Metz, the exhibition takes a look at Tania Mouraud's career and artistic practice, from her 1968 autodafe, a profoundly symbolic act of destruction that ended her initial pictorial years, through to her initiation and mediation rooms of 1970s, up to her most recent works. The exhibition highlights her tenacious career, marked by her encounters with prominent contemporary artists, as well as by her personal life story.

The selection of over 70 works of art, some from the artist's personal collection, unveil the portrait of a socially engaged Tania Mouraud. Several historic works will be re-enacted in the scope of the exhibition as well.

Special focus is given to her meditation rooms as well as her photo-texts and works on language from the 1970s, all emblematic of Tania Mouraud's repertoire. The exhibition will be the first to fully explore the expanse of her initiation rooms. Her first meditation room, One more night (1970), initially realised for the eponymous exhibition by Jean Larcade at the Galerie Rive Droite in Paris, has been specially reconstructed for the show.

AD NAUSEAM, a monumental audiovisual installation presented at MAC/VAL – Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne from 20 September 2014 to 25 January 2015, is also being shown in an adapted version. This major work by Mouraud was co-produced with Ircam (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) during her residency there in 2013-14.

THE CITY-WIDE EXHIBITION - THE WALK

This survey exhibition will expand into the city of Metz starting on 27June 2015, incorporating nine partner institutions and venues. Diverse aspects of Tania Mouraud's work will be presented, expanding on the exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz. This will take the visitor on an extended walk through the city to exhibition spaces at Arsenal – EPCC Metz en Scènes, Chapelle des Templiers, Église Saint-Pierre-aux-Nonnains, Faux Mouvement – Centre d’art contemporain, 49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine, Musée de la Cour d’Or – Metz Métropole, Toutouchic and Octave Cowbell art galleries as well as in front of the Galeries Lafayette department store. The artist's emblematic works will be revealed throughout the urban landscape and workshops with the artist herself offered to students at École Supérieure d’Art de Lorraine in the scope of a one-year collaboration.

Extended patronage by 49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine has intricately linked Mouraud's work and artistic career to the city of Metz since 1990s, starting in 1995 with the acquisition of City Performance N°1, an anthological work from the late 1970s. This work consists of 54 billboard signs with the word “NI” (literally neither/nor) printed in 4x3m and placed throughout the city of Paris. Further support from 49 Nord 6 Est - Frac Lorraine came in 2005 with the monumental project titled HCYS?.This large-scale work covers a blind wall at the Musée de la Cour d’Or. The City Performance N°1 poster campaign has been revived for one week throughout the city of Metz and its suburbs within the framework of Tania Mouraud. A retrospective.

An exhibition catalogue accompanies the exhibition. This reference work will include a significant amount of her writings and numerous unprecedented documents.

The École Supérieure d'Art de Lorraine has contributed to this retrospective.
 

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